SUMMER OF STARS

Summer of Stars Part 21

            “What?” he yelled back.

            “Please, I think she’s dead!” I screamed. He sprinted toward me.

            “What’s going on?” he asked as he reached the front stoop. I stood back and let him in.

            “I think she’s tried to kill herself. I just found her like this.” I knelt beside the couch and put my arms around her. My entire body was shaking. “Mom, Mom, please wake up.”

            “Is she breathing?” Ian moved closer.

            “I think so, but she won’t wake up and I can’t find her pulse.” I laid my head on her chest. “I can’t hear her heart beating.”

            Right then, we heard the sirens outside. “You called 911?” Ian asked.

            I ran out the front door to meet the paramedics. They followed me back into the house. “I think she tried to commit suicide,” I cried.

            The men ran to her side and began working on her. I stood horrified across the room, watching and sobbing. Ian wrapped his arms around me. “She’s still alive. She’s going to be okay.”

            “I forgot to call her. It’s my fault. I didn’t wait for her to get home. I didn’t call her. I didn’t even leave a note. She was so happy this morning and I ruined it. It’s all my fault.”

            “This your mom?” a paramedic yelled as they pushed the gurney out the front door. “You coming with us?”

            “Yes, I’m coming.” I pulled away from Ian and ran after them.

            “Where’s your Dad?” Ian called.

            “At the Holiday Inn on the parkway.”

            “I’ll call him for you.”

            “Thank you,” I replied before climbing in the back of the ambulance with my mom.

            When we got to the hospital, I was sent to a waiting room while they worked on Mom. Dad arrived about thirty minutes after we did.

            “How is she?” he asked as he burst into the room and took me in his arms.

            “Alive,” I replied before completely losing it.

            “God, I’m so sorry you had to find her like that. I wish it would have been me instead of you.” He walked me to the chairs that lined the wall and we sat.

            “She was good this morning. She was out of bed, making breakfast and happy even. I wanted to believe she was fine. She went to the studio and stayed gone all day. Ian and I made plans to go to dinner and I couldn’t reach her to tell her I was going out.” I shook my head. “I should have waited for her.”

            “It’s not your fault. It’s her disease.”

            The doctor came into the waiting room. “Mr. Ray?” He looked at Dad.

            “Yes.”

            “We pumped her stomach. She is conscious and resting now.”

            “Can we see her? Is she talking?” I asked.

            “She did answer some questions for us,” the doctor replied.